No, he's not

Ladies, you just might want to skip this post.  I know that merely saying that will pique your curiosity.  Trust me.  This ones for guys who've played football or hockey or baseball.

If you've worn a cup, this one's for you.

When my family and I traveled to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, my brother and I commiserated over the darkness of the Minnesota Vikings' season.  Brad Childress had yet to be canned.  We got to talking about when we played football as kids when I mentioned to him that I was amazed that so many of the pros no longer wore knee pads or thigh pads.


"No way!" he countered.

"Oh, yes," I maintained.  "And it gets worse.  A lot of them have stopped wearing cups."

He looked at me like I had just declared the earth to be flat, like I'd just revealed that I'd lived an alternate life in an alternate universe with Rosie O'Donnell, or like I believed Bud Grant to be a closet Packer fan.


Oomph....ommm...breath...

A brief trip to the internet and a peek at the pics from the previous weeks' games, and my brother shook his head in utter dismay.

Do knee pads and thigh pads restrict speed and agility so much as to aschew them altogether?  We could see cornerbacks getting away without them.  Maybe the safeties.  But most linemen and running backs still wear them. 

But--take a deep breath and think on this--most do not protect their ability to procreate. 

I remember hitting an opposing player during a hockey game, and as he flew off his feet, his knee came straight north into Mason and Dixon.  I dropped like a sack of potatoes and that while wearing a cup!  I horror to think on what might have been.

In trying to prove my story to my brother, I came across this gem on ESPN (btw, the ESPN blog is titled "Page 2."  The article starts right there).  David Fleming tries to come to terms with the collective insanity that has overcome NFL players.  He summed it up nicely.  "If you ask me, they're all nuts."